The lawsuits are flying through the air like bats. If you could fold each one of them into paper airplanes and sail them through the skies of Washington D.C., the sky would be black. The latest person to wax litigious is Michael Cohen who is suing the United States government for $20 million, claiming that Bill Barr illegally returned him to prison in 2020 in retaliation for writing a book about Donald Trump. Whatever we’ve heard from Bill Barr or about Bill Barr so far has been the tip of the iceberg, and this is going to go below the waterline. CNBC:
Cohen, in a notice of claim filed against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, accuses the government of false arrest, false imprisonment and wrongful confinement.
Cohen, 54, says he suffered “emotional pain and suffering, mental anguish and loss of freedom” from being sent back to a federal prison in July 2020 just weeks after being furloughed early due to concerns over his risk from Covid-19.
Cohen’s lawyers are preparing a second claim alleging that then-Attorney General William Barr and BOP Director Michael Carvajal violated his First Amendment right to free speech by returning him to prison.
The filing comes almost a year after a Manhattan federal court judge, in ordering Cohen’s release after more than two weeks, ruled that the purpose of Barr and Carvajal in sending Cohen back to prison “was retaliatory in response to Cohen intending to exercise his First Amendment rights to publish a book critical of the President and to discuss the book on social media.”
The government has six months to respond to Cohen’s claim. If it does not respond, he would be able to file a lawsuit against the government and other defendants.
Get out your calendar and mark this down. It looks like Merrick Garland is going to make his career litigating Trump world claims. There is no lack of them. When you put a con man and crook into the nation’s highest office, it can’t go any other way.
Our tax dollars at work. ??